


[Fandom stats] What are the most common AUs, and which fandoms have lots of AUs?

by toastystats (destinationtoast)



Series: Fandom Stats [42]
Category: Fandom - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Meta, Nonfiction, Research
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-02
Updated: 2014-07-05
Packaged: 2019-09-15 04:10:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16926264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/destinationtoast/pseuds/toastystats
Summary: A look at how the proportion of "Alternate Universe" fanworks varies across a bunch of fandoms, and at which AUs are most common.





	1. Which fandoms have the most AU works?

**Author's Note:**

> Originally [posted to Tumblr](http://destinationtoast.tumblr.com/post/57201633001/this-week-episode-8-of-the-three-patch-podcast).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Which fandoms have the most AU works? Do fandoms with lots of fanworks tend to generate more AU works? This was prompted by a question about the Sherlock fandom, but applies more broadly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally [posted to Tumblr](http://destinationtoast.tumblr.com/post/57201633001/this-week-episode-8-of-the-three-patch-podcast).

This week, [Episode 8](http://threepatchpodcast.tumblr.com/post/57071585303/episode-8-whats-it-like-in-your-funny-little) of the [Three Patch Podcast](http://www.three-patch.com/) explored the various Sherlock AUs.  There was lot of great discussion and analysis.  But one thing I found interesting was the presumption that the Sherlock fandom has a lot more AU works than most fandoms.  I decided to look into this on AO3 (I know Tumblr is where a lot of the great AU fanart lives -- but I still don't have a great way to examine that yet).

I asked three questions:

  1. **Q:  Does Sherlock produce more fanfic tagged "Alternate Universe" on AO3 than average?  
**   
A:  No.  Sherlock is exactly the same as the overall AO3 average, with 13% tagged AU (or something related -- AO3 clusters related tags together).    
  
In Figure 1, I compared a bunch of fandoms.  The set is generated arbitrarily by my own brain, but also includes the fandoms that have the most works tagged AU before normalization -- which are mostly just the most popular fandoms overall.  Les Mis is the big outlier (it's in the list of top fandoms generating AUs, despite its smaller size as a fandom; a whopping 42% of ifs fics are tagged AU); I suspect that "AU" in the case of Les Mis mostly signifies a plot divergence in which the people who died in canon stay alive (but I would love to hear from someone who reads/writes in that fandom).  **Edit:**[new feedback](http://destinationtoast.tumblr.com/post/57360249844/re-i-suspect-that-au-in-the-case-of-les-mis-mostly) indicates my Les Mis hypothesis is not correct.  
  


(Note: I'm sorry that the fandom names are so tiny in this image; let me know if you can't read them and want the list.  Also, the reason that a few of them have numbers after them in parentheses is that those are the top 10 fandoms generating AU fic; I cut and pasted the list from AO3 and forgot to remove the number afterwards that specifies the number of fics tagged AU in that fandom.)  
  


  2. **Q:  Do fandoms that produce more fanfic generate more AU fics proportionately?  
**   
A: No.  My thinking was that maybe fandoms that produce a whole lot of material are more likely to have explored a lot of more common themes fairly thoroughly, and more likely to start inventing AUs.  But as Figure 2 shows, there is no correlation between the amount of fanfic produced in a fandom and the proportion that is AU.  (R^2 = 0.01, which means there's no relationship -- at least for the small subset of fandoms that I've analyzed so far.)  
**  
**
  3. ****Q: Do fandoms where the source material is already an AU generate a different amount of AU fic than fandoms where the source material takes place in our own universe?  
  
****A: No.**** At least from among the fandoms listed above, there is no significant difference between these two groups. (p = 0.29 -- not even close.)



I was surprised that the answer to all of these was no!  How about you?

****Question you may be asking: What's next for the AO3/fandom analysis series?**** I'm currently writing some programs that will help me gather data off of AO3 for ALL fandoms, so that I can easily ask questions like:

  * Which fandoms have the highest proportion of AU fics?  (out of all fandoms on AO3)
  * Which fandoms have the highest proportion of femslash? 
  * How much variance is there across fandom in terms of the amount of shipping vs. Gen fics?



I'll also be able to answer all sorts of other questions that involve comparing stats across all fandoms.  I'm pretty excited about this!  (OMG, you guys, so excited.)   But it'll take a while to write the code and do the analyses, and I haven't been doing too many analyses in the meantime.  

I also might eventually write something to grab data from Tumblr about Tumblr fandom tags, but that's farther in the future.

**[[the AO3/fandom analysis series](http://destinationtoast.tumblr.com/stats)]**


	2. The most common Alternate Universe tags

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Out of the tags on AO3 that specify types of AUs, like "Alternate Universe - High School," what are the most common tags? (as of 2015)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally [posted to Tumblr](http://destinationtoast.tumblr.com/post/90896197629/during-my-interview-for-the-bayareasherlockcon). Sorry for the old, low res graph.

During my interview for the [bayareasherlockcon](http://tmblr.co/mTRZK0i7cSdJTJ0HuIQDfnA) livestream chat, I got a statsbunny.  :)  I did some quick poking into types of AUs that people tag on AO3.  

(Note, this ls strongly influenced by how AO3 authors tag their works -- and how AO3 tag wranglers decide to organize tags.)

As of today,  **14% of fanworks on AO3 (171K works) have an AU tag**  ([Alternate Universe](http://archiveofourown.org/tags/Alternate%20Universe) or one of its sub tags).

[[MORE]]

**The biggest AU tag is "Alternate Universe - Canon" (26K works -- 15% of AU works),**  which includes fanworks that somehow alter canon.  Here are the main subtags:

  * Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence (19K)
  * Canonical Alternate Universe (954)
  * Universe Alteration (207)
  * Alternate Universe - Post-Canon (153)
  * Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon (123)



I'm not sure how Universe Alteration differs from the other categories -- might be something an AO3 tag wrangler could better explain.

The above word cloud graphic shows all the children (direct sub tags) of the of Alternate Universe tag that have at least 50 fanworks*.  Raw data is [here](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1O1rBAIO9UVdXoPnWO5Z0oBvz-1k4pqu_HCf5lZ1SJmg/edit#gid=1218467142).  Here are just the ones with over 1000 fanworks:

Note that these AU categories are not mutually exclusive.

I'm interested in the fact that a lot of the most popular AUs basically take place in the real/modern world.  Modern Setting, Human, School, Career (which includes the famed Coffeeshop AU) -- many of these fanworks are about taking the characters and making them more like us.  Others certainly involve adding or changing supernatural/speculative elements -- but considering how much of the talk at AU panels I've attended focuses on the delightfully whimsical and unreal examples (tunalock!) or the worldbuilding examples (Omegaverse, BDSMverse), I'm actually a bit surprised to see so many "normal" (though by no means necessarily uncreative or unwhimsical) AUs out there.  Fascinating!  :D

*Note: I did omit fandoms that referred to something specific to a single fandom; I believe some of the tags have not yet been fully wrangled and will eventually be placed underneath other of these tags.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments welcome, but I may be slow to respond as I'm in the midst of a mass backup due to the Tumblr purge.


End file.
